"What used to be the domain of the granola-and-Birkenstock fringe has turned into a hypercommercialized industry for the masses. The lotus position has given way to an explosion of fusion classes that hyphenate yoga with every imaginable exercise and body part. The rolled-up mat of the old days has morphed into a multibillion-dollar market of clothing lines, books, videos, music, lessons, props and accessories. It's yogis gone wild at the gym."
This is a long feature piece about the explosion of yoga and pseudo-yoga hybrids in the fitness market. It tracks the rise of these new breeds nd encroachments into popular culture. For instance, YogaFit gets a lot of play in the story.
Some yogis are offended by the popularization of yoga. I say, it's all good: whatever it takes to get people started down the path. The cute, trendy techniques will last as long as the crowds come. Hopefully, more yoga shops starting up will increase the possibility of me getting a little more elbow room in my classes. With more legitimacy as a health tool, yoga will also get more serious research to underscore its benefits and hold down the hype.
All this intellectual snootiness can come at a price. I've never felt drawn to taking a vacation. In the past five years, my vacations and holidays have generally been opportunities for moonlighting. My wife has usually had to drag me kicking on holiday trips. My singlemindedness has kept me from relaxing and accepting the serendipitous encounter.
But yoga and meditation always come back at you to remind you that the only thing that matters is now, the current moment. Only in the present can we act as human beings in our fullnest dimension. By cutting back on our ambitions we will be rewarded.
This is not a momentous discovery -- I'm just trying to keep myself honest.
I apologize for any disruption of service, broken links or other cyber-mayhem. This switchover had to occur during business hours so I don't have complete freedom of focus on fixing everything. Patience is a yogic virtue.
Since I've been thinking about going on a yoga retreat or cruise, I am going to have to include her in the outing (you would think). She can't just come along for the sightseeing. In any case, I think she has observed me over the past six months and how I've grown with the yoga, the meditation and the pranayama. She doesn't complain when I disappear for an hour to do my routines. She encourages our children to think about practicing yoga to keep their minds and body pure.
In other words, I would not have been able to get this far without her tacit support.
A repercussion is that Dmoz entries get replicated in many other listings, for instance, this Nodeworks Web Directory.
Schema therapy says that there are ten basic mind sets that engender strategies to cope. These are burned into our minds from childhood, kind of an automatic pilot in response to stress, trouble or human relationships. They might have made sense when we were children, but they led to us repeating maladaptive behavior. Knee-jerk reactions to our encounters with family, friends, colleagues and strangers.
You can take an easy test to see which ones prevail in your personality. For instance, perfectionism or social exclusion.
Bennett-Goleman draws on case histories of her patients and on her own Buddhist learning experience. What interested me was the use of meditation as a tool applied to other purposes. It's not just useful in and of itself, but as a means of achieving distance between the person and his problems. Rather than saying that meditation is good for you (like eat your spinach), she shows that it helps maintain a healthy balance of the mind and spirit, just as yoga does on the physical side.
I personally would have preferred to see the content shrunk down to 100-150 pages. A nice touch is a post-script after most chapters -- exercises in mindfulness meditation. In my desire to finish the book, I will have to go back and do them.
I should add that my current meditation approach sahaj samadhi is not so task-oriented. Art of Living instructors emphasize it as an emotional hygiene, like brushing your teeth. It will "de-stress" you. The Buddhist school seems much more oriented to applied learning. Techniques seem to be more varied in the Buddhist school.
It all makes a lot of sense -- at least it does now. I've had the book for more than a year and a half and never got around to reading past the first chapter. I picked it off the sale stacks at Borders for $6. The Goleman name caught my attention because her husband has worked closely with the Dalai Lama in a collaborative effort between Western scientists and Tibetan monks. He also pushes a concept called Emotional Intelligence. I rekindled my interest now because the meditation angle fits my own discovery of its value.
But Marichyasana really means "Pose Dedicated to the Sage Marichi" and has nothing to do with the Mexican muscial genre.
You learn something new everyday.
The only downside is the schedule (Friday, 6:30 and Sunday, 10:30) and the short drive I have to take for each class.
There was strong attendance -- the exercise area was full, though a more orderly approach might have crammed more people into the space -- both on a Friday evening and a Sunday morning. I'd think around 30 people, maybe more. It was a mixed bag of students -- older, retirement age folks and younger people. I got the impression this was an opportunity for people to get their toes wet in the yogic ocean. Some people did not have much body-awareness.
Loud, upbeat music -- no Krishna Das kirtan chants -- and the instructor, Sophia, was miked so that her voice could be heard over the clanging weights and exercise machines. She led the class as if it were an aerobics class, from a podium. I saw her come down once to correct someone technique. She verbally corrected a few others. At TransquilSpace, you get a lots more hands on teaching. Physical space is definitely tighter, but the atmosphere is more conducive to yoga.
We did lots of sun salutations, but kept them pretty simple. She demoed several modifications if anyone wanted to be adventurous. No inversions -- you don't want to embarrass novices before the whole gym so that they never come back.
Hey, the classes are free with Bally membership so you can't complain.
I view this as kind of halfway between my TranquilSpace classes and my home practice. It will improve my overall conditioning and flexibility and make me work on problem areas (balance, for instance). I can do a cardiovascular workout either before or afterwards. I could easy outgrow the group because it does not offer much learning space.
Digging into online archives, I found some articles about Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and the Art of Living Foundation. They each have some unique insights into what Sri Sri has meant to his followers. Of course, there are others who think that he's just another Hindu swami milking the world's weakness for mysticism.
- BusinessWeek A Guru Teaches Techies How to Breathe - September 22, 2003
- Scotsman.com The smiling holy man who dreams of a world full of joy - June 24, 2004
- AsiaWeek Power Yoga February 16, 2001
- SifyNews 'Art of Living has made a world of difference' - November 13, 2003
